


like the sea over sand

by callunavulgari



Category: Naruto, The Matrix (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Alternate Universe - School, Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Crossover, Cyberpunk, Drabble Collection, F/F, IN SPACE!, M/M, Request Meme, Slice of Life, Space Pirates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 02:05:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/717607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callunavulgari/pseuds/callunavulgari
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don't remember many of your past lives—you are nothing like this river. It remembers, you do not. (Or ten lives Shisui and Itachi might have lived.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	like the sea over sand

**Author's Note:**

> Done for my ten AU meme from forever ago. After this one I only owe like... one more? I think. Title is taken from Heartlines by Florence + the Machine, because she still has perfect lyrics for this ship.

**01\. Domestic/Slice-of-Life**  
"I missed you," Itachi says, a rare smile lighting his face up, dark eyes gone soft with emotion. Shisui drops one of the bags he's holding and smiles back, spreading his arms and breathing in the smell of Itachi's shampoo when he wraps his arms around him.   
  
"I missed you too," he breathes, because jesus christ, he really did. One would think he would have gone away to war going by the way that Itachi is hanging off of him instead of just taking his fourth graders on a camping trip for a week.   
  
He groans a little bit when they migrate over to the couch, all the kinks in his back protesting every moment. "Oh sweet couch, I will never doubt you again. I shan't ever complain about the spring that stabs me in the ass no matter where I'm sitting, nor the cushions that lack stuffing. Just don't make me go back to the dirt, please no."  
  
Itachi chuckles a little bit, still snuggled up against his side. "Would you like a massage?" he asks, dark eyes glinting with amusement.  
  
Shisui grins at him, pressing a fond kiss to his brow. At this point, he doesn't give a damn whether massage is a euphemism for sex or if it's really just a massage, he would gladly welcome both. He pulls Itachi in for a proper kiss and nuzzles their noses together as he pulls away. "Have I told you I loved you yet today?" he asks, groaning again when Itachi digs his thumb into a particularly sore muscle. "Because I really, really do."  
  
 **02\. Cyberpunk**  
There's a river that cuts your city in half—it's one of the old rivers still left on this planet. A river that has seen an era without smog and concrete, a time when there was grass and villages and a lack of exhaust fumes. You think it might even have been pretty once, before it turned into a dumping ground for the people who didn't feel like following regulations and sending their refuse to an incinerator—before it turned into the sluggish, poisonous thing that it is now.  
  
You don't remember many of your past lives—you are nothing like this river. It remembers, you do not.  
  
You do, however, feel drawn to it. You wonder if this river has seen any of your past selves, if maybe it remembers for you.   
  
Itachi curls closer to you, kicking his mismatched legs idly, the steel of his arm chilling your flesh as the river moves quietly beneath the two of you. You listen to the river gurgle as Itachi breathes against your neck. Together, you watch it flow.

 

 **03\. Gods and Demons and Angels, oh my!**  
The blood is still wet beneath your booted heel, the circle meticulously crafted. You search it carefully for any break, a scuff mark or perhaps a place where the blood has started to flake. The circle is perfect, you think, annoyed. Of course it is, and now you are bound to some _human_. You sincerely hope the creature is foolish, you haven't tasted human flesh in far too long.  
  
When you look up, a scowl already on your face, you freeze.  
  
You feel your entire body flinch, the shudder working its way through the muscles that you haven't used since the last time you were earthbound. You cringe and you stare, because though the face is older—crows feet at the corners of dark, dark eyes and hands leathery with age—you would know it anywhere.  
  
He looks like you would have, had you lived.  
  
You haven't seen your brother since you died at his hand, and truth be told, you hadn't expected to see it again until he joined you in the afterlife.  
  
"Itachi?" he whispers, dark eyes gone wide, and you can already hear Shisui's laughter.  
  
 **04\. Pirates**  
"I'm not overly fond of water," his cousin says, backing away from the little boat rocking up against the dock. Shisui grins. His ship is barely visible against the black and already he feels the itch to be on her once more.  
  
Itachi is pale, staring out over the water with a look not unlike apprehension. No matter, he'll get used to it. You aren't leaving him behind again.  
  
 **05\. …In SPACE!!**  
"Man the starboard bow," you shout to the newest of the recruits you had picked up on one of the planets at the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy. The boy flinches a bit, but his expression quickly turns to determination, snapping out a sloppy salute and taking off across the ship, the soles of his shoes slapping against the deck.  
  
"You could go easier on them," Itachi says from behind you, sounding amused. "Rather than orchestrating a narrow escape from a black hole within their first week."  
  
You turn to grin at him, tightening your grip on the railing as your ship shudders and groans all around you.  
  
"Now where would the fun be in that?" you ask, dragging him in closer for a quick kiss. "Everyone knows that cheating death is the best team-building exercise out there."

 

 **06\. Born Another Gender**  
Itachi isn't pretty in a conventional sense. She's too awkward around people for most to really see her shine. She wears old Mathlete shirts and paints her nails dark colors, her fingers dipped in ink. Her glasses are too old to be attractive in that new hipster sense—the left lens scratched, one of the arms forever crooked so they're constantly sliding down her nose, and one of the pads is snapped off, so she's always got an irritated red mark near the bridge of her nose where the metal has dug into her skin.  
  
She doesn't talk much, not even to you. She's all soft-spoken words and jibes so subtle that if you didn't know her, you wouldn't even know she was messing with you. She's straddling the line of slightly too thin, but you know that it has nothing to do with eating disorders and everything to do with how fast her metabolism runs. There are very faint acne scars around her chin, hard to notice if you didn't know her when she was twelve years old and spottier than a leopard. She listens to old folk music and Gregorian chant and has won more spelling bees than you've won swim meets. She does Tai Chi in her spare time and her jokes are horrifyling nerdy.  
  
She'll never be prom queen material and she knows it, but you know that she could care less. You've seen her take down four guys at one time for hitting on her sister, but walk away when someone's insulted her. The words four-eyes, ugly, and pathetic don't seem to matter to her, insults slide right off of her.  
  
Most people would look at her next to you and think that she's not too bad, but then they'll go right back to wolf-whistling at your cleavage and your wild curls. You kind of think that they're all stupid for not being _able_ to see how absolutely gorgeous she is. They aren't capable of seeing the beauty in the brittle bones of her wrist or how she moves, one pale line of grace and poise.   
  
They don't see what you do, but that's okay. You're happy enough to have her all to yourself.  
  
 **07\. Schoolfic**  
"I hate math, I don't even care. None of this even matters," Shisui whines, throwing his pencil away and dropping his face onto the table with a loud, dramatic thump.  
  
Itachi sighs, and carefully lifts Shisui's head back up with a palm to the forehead. He raises an eyebrow, slow and careful. "If you finish this test with a grade that isn't failing, we can have sex in my father's car."  
  
Shisui makes a strange noise, and though he still complains, he does actually pass.  
  
 **08\. Apocalypse**  
The radiation hasn't reached the city yet, but you know it's just a matter of time. The bombs have already taken your brother from you, you aren't going to let them take him. So the two of you head down to the river at the very edge of the city, the one that has yet to grow murky and dark with pollution.  
  
He smiles at you, and there's something to the tilt of it that makes you think he already knows how this is going to go.   
  
You smile back, and you think he might be about to say something—"it'll be okay," or "I love you," or perhaps even, "I'll see you on the other side,"—but in the end, you'll never know.  
  
You sit in the shallows of the river and hold him under until the bubbles stop.  
  
He doesn't fight it.

 

 **09\. Urban Fantasy**  
Your Itachi is nothing like the rest of his kind. Or maybe he is, and you're just too blind to see it. His skin is pale enough that you can watch the feathers shift under his skin, black and iridescent—sometimes you'll watch him molt, fascinated as the feathers drop away from his wings, one by one.   
  
The rest of the block call him a demon, and soon enough, you know how to say the word in five separate languages, six if you count the rudimentary Japanese that you remember from before your parents died.  
  
He stays with you, and you never once wonder what drew him to you. You're just thankful that he's there when you get home from work, curled up on your ratty old couch like it isn't a hand down from the last tenant and probably riddled with bed bugs. He makes a nest out of your sheets at night and when he touches his lips and hands to your skin, you can feel the whisper of feathers.  
  
He licks and kisses and lets you fuck him until he wails, and when a concerned neighbor bursts into your apartment with a gun, he just dissolves into ravens, leaving you to deal with the neighbor who now thinks you fuck birds.  
  
When he comes back later, laughing into your neck, you glare at him. "That wasn't very funny."  
  
He shrugs and wraps his wings around you like they're arms. "I thought it was."  
  
 **10\. Crossover**  
-Matrix crossover-  
  
The boy with your cousin's face smiles at you, one pale twist of his lips that makes your heart stutter. This is the same boy that you remember crying for his mother in pre-school, the same kid who won spelling bees and math competitions—the kid who went off to college to become a physicist and here he is, telling you that the world is all one big computer simulation, like you wouldn't know what bad code looked like in your sleep.  
  
But, you think, _follow the white rabbit_.  
  
Itachi sets his hands on yours, eyes dark and skin pale and says, "I came back for you. Don't you see? This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back."   
  
His breath hitches a bit and you stare, because Itachi's never flustered. Never.   
  
He clears his throat, eyes flashing red like the text on your computer screen telling you to wake up. "You take the blue pill," he whispers, clasping your hand so tight that it hurts. "The story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes."  
  
He looks at you, those strange eyes pleading, the shade itself telling you which color he wants you to pick, and breathes, "Please, Shisui. Come with me."  
  
In the end, you've never been able to deny him what he wants.


End file.
